Thinking back to May 29, 2020 – all afternoon I have been intensely soaking in and reading about the national and international Uprisings following George Floyd’s murder by police. Later that night I am visited by a clear idea for an effort to create a Memorial Mural on my garage doors. In my mind’s eye everything is in place, including the repetitive, stark black and white design and layout. A Garage Memorial for Black Lives Matter – out on the street for everyone to behold. It speaks in its own voice: a moral obligation coming from my German heritage and legacy, with all its difficult lessons and weight. There is no way I can refuse. Especially having lived and worked here in the United States of America for the past 39 years. All night I dream of painting calligraphy with a brush.

I want people to stumble upon my BLM mural, in an unlikely location here in the hills of North Berkeley. Next morning I call a lawyer friend just to be sure it is lawful to make my garage doors into a memorial in public view. (More on the “stumbling” soon.)  Each victim’s name and story are getting their own slot, the geometric pattern to be repeated in order to create a recognizable rhythm and structure for the different handwritings of the painting participants. I envision it as community project, but do not know how it all could come together. We are in an unprecedented pandemic and lock down, with people distancing, masking, sanitizing, distancing.

The simple design helps the painting process. Adhering to the lines of the wood panels, in each rectangle three names in big letters, followed to the right in smaller letters their “story” in shorthand, in two or three lines. Allowing for the natural diversity of each person’s calligraphy, and yet making sure that the bigger “picture” would have coherence. And possibly, an organic beauty – a kind of symphony – would arise and hold it all together. Honoring the tragedies, the lives, the sadness. The unspeakable – and Life.